What Is The Difference Between SEO and PPC?
Pay-per-click (PPC) is a lead generation service working to capture your desired target audience whilst they’re in the buying process. This marketing strategy consists of paying Google a fee for the business to put them at the top of the Google search like a Google Ad. If you are looking to see fast results, this is a proven digital service that will allow your website to get noticed online. From here, the business must then pay a small fee every time someone clicks the advert to visit the web page, this is where the name pay per click comes from.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a long-term solution for businesses who are willing to invest in digital marketing for their business, working to get your website found online when a relevant search is made. SEO is approached differently as the professionals will be working to improve the technical performance of your website, on-page content, and authority elements of the website allowing the organic search result rankings to improve. If you’re looking to work with a PPC specialist, read more to find out the difference between SEO and PPC campaigns.
The Difference Between SEO and PPC: Long Term Solution (SEO) VS Short Term Solution (PPC)
PPC (Short Term)
Pay-Per-Click Advertising provides you with immediate answers when the ads are live and keyword research is implemented correctly. A successful campaign will consist of thorough keyword research, analysing the bidding price, volume of traffic and competition. From here, the Google Ads expert will begin to build your campaign around the research that is found to help optimize your site.
Let’s dive into the short-term benefits of pay-per-click advertising and why this is a great service if you’re looking to see fast results.
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a good approach if you’re looking to get your business to the top of Google and visible to customers immediately to gain more traffic. Occasionally you may find that just by being at the top of the Google results page, you are not guaranteed high traffic as some customers ignore Google PPC Ads and engage with the content below that has been gained through SEO. If you are continuing to invest in SEO in the background, over time as you begin to see results in your Search Engine Marketing, you can stop your ads and begin to rely on your organic ranking.
SEO (Long Term)
Search Engine Marketing is a long-term marketing solution for websites looking to rank on Google to get in front of any potential customer whilst they’re in the buying process. The main difference between PPC and SEO marketing comes down to the long-term solution of SEO. It takes time for this to settle and for your website to begin to compete and rank on Google’s search engine results.
Implementing SEO can be time-consuming to achieve a high ranking as normally websites have a variety of fixes to make before they can rank – HOWEVER, once the website has gained a high ranking it is easy to maintain the position and then requires minimal effort from the business. Having an SEO strategy implemented for the business can be costly in the short term when they have yet to rank highly yet, however, once they have ranked the expense will become minimal in comparison to the improvements made for the business.
Difference Between SEO and PPC: Cost
Running a Paid Advertising Campaign comes at a cost per click. Using this method costs the business a certain amount every time someone clicks the site, not for every sale made. This means that if the conversion rate is low they will be spending a large amount on PPC but not gaining the sales to justify it. The cost per click is calculated by the number of searches per month for that term/phrase, so if the business is in a popular industry it will be very costly to rank in Google Ads for the keyword. When working with a Google ads manager, there will be a cost associated with the services and the cost per click of the ads.
Search Engine Marketing comes at a fixed cost per month, as you will be working with a trusted marketing agency that will have a base price for your SEO campaign. The positives of this strategy are that there is no cost to having traffic to the site, this means that the business won’t pay for dead leads such as customers bouncing out of the website. This is a benefit as the cost of implementing SEO can be high, however, once the business has ranked highly then they are not paying directly for the traffic.
For more information regarding Search Engine Marketing or Pay-Per-Click Advertising, or if you want to know more about the difference between SEO and PPC take this opportunity to reach out to the marketing specialists at HC Media Group and claim your FREE 30-minute marketing consultation. Whether you’re looking for short-term results or a long-term strategy, get in touch today!